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The best thing about the activity of running is that it can be done by almost everybody. Runners are young and old, tall and short, thin and fat, fast and slow, and tell altered facts and stories like most of the population. I have a poster on my wall that reads, “If you think fisherman are the biggest liars, just ask a runner how far he runs each day.” There are runners that will tell you, “I ran 1,045 miles last year.” I am not sure how they measured these miles. Some drive the course in a car after the run to see how many miles the run was. I have certified courses on a calibrated bike after the race organizer has measured the course in their car and found that their measurement was over a quarter of a mile short. The path that a runner takes and the path that a car drives on the road may vary by quite a distance. My truck measures distance down to a tenth of a mile and I have a friend that has a truck that is really accurate. We will be on a run and he will point to a bush or some landmark and say, “I measured that landmark and it is 5.415 miles from my house.” That is one remarkable odometer he has in his truck.
The other thing that runners relate to is the time that they run. With stop watches attached to the wrist it is easy to time the length of the run down to hundredths of a second. Some runners are very obsessed with the amount of time they run. I was on a run one day with a friend who stepped on a rock and severely sprained his ankle. I know for a fact that his watch was stopped before the scream of pain left his mouth. One other friend in that category tripped on a wire coat hanger that was in the road and fell to the ground. His watch was stopped before he hit the ground and checked for injuries.
Another feature about runners is how they tell friends how fast they run. I am too blame for this on occasion. I ran a 3:03:54 time in a marathon. Now, I can tell friends that I ran a marathon in, “Just under three hours and four minutes.” This is a true statement. But the only thing my friends will remember is that I ran a 3:04 marathon. I could leave the seconds off in my time and tell them I ran a 3:03 marathon and that sounds much faster. I debate at times as to what I tell friends what my time in a marathon is. I have known runners to leave as much as five minutes off of a race time.
There are runners that do run because they enjoy the good feeling and benefits running gives them. Of course, I can always relate to the time I entered a race “for fun” and proceeded to have the drive heaves after the run trying to run fast at the end. And while they run the race for fun, and do not worry about their time, they always want to know what their time was. Then in the next race they run, or walk, a faster time they feel very good about the fact that they are improving and getting better. It won’t be long before they are running each race to see if they can run a faster time.
One other part of running that runners seem to relate to is what place they ran in a race. A good example of that is when I ran in the Boston Marathon. I tell people I beat over 11,400 runners in the race. That sounds better than I finished behind 1,230 runners. I usually tell people I ran the Boston Marathon and stop there. One other point runners use that is a true statement, but is more of what you call a ‘half- truth’. I finished in first place overall in a race one time. This is one and only time I ever finished first overall. The part that is not included in the statement is that there were only 15 runners in the race. The group of friends I was running with usually finished somewhere back in the pack. Now in this race we were the lead runners so I knew something was different. There was only one runner in the group that I did not know what type of runner he was. I told my friends I am going to take off and see what happens with this other runner. He stayed with my friends and I came in first place. While the run was a first-place finish it did not have the prestige of running in a larger race and placing in an age group.
There are some runners that become obsessed with running. It is the one thing in their daily schedule that is the No. 1 priority. When they come down with an injury and cannot run they often become almost impossible to deal with. There are some that will try to “run through the injury” and hope that it heals while continuing to run. It is these runners that often keep medical doctors in business. I bet there are some runners who would use crutches to run if they had a broken foot. I fell into that category when I had stress fractures in my feet but had to run in the half marathon race that was named after me. The only thing I can relate that experience to is trying to run on egg shells and not stepping on the ground. It was almost six weeks before I could run again.
Runners come in a variety of different personalities when it comes to being a running story teller. Stories might be rounded off, facts might be altered a little, and the truth might be stretched a bit, but all in all most runners are telling stories just like people sitting around a campfire. Runners are the same as the general population when it comes to recalling events they have experienced.
